What’s up, folks? Patrick LeRouge here from Evolve Restorative Therapy. You can find me at livepainfreeprocess.com. I help people eliminate pain and for the long-term, I help you enhance your performance for long-term. That’s what I’m here to do today, folks. And today is a fun topic for me. As you can see, I’m a little giddy. And what I want to talk to you about is foam rolling should not be painful. That’s the name of the game today, and I find this comical because I look all over the place, and every time I talk to a person, I was like, “Oh, do you foam roll?” And they say, “No, it hurts too much,” or “I stay away from that because it hurts too much,” or “That’s the worst thing in the world that feels so good and it hurts so bad.” And I’m just like, I don’t understand that. How does that make sense? The body is not designed just to say, ‘Oh, I’m going to hurt you and it’s going to be great.’
So think about this analogy, I decide to walk up to you and punch you in the face repeatedly. Just keep on punching you, punching you, punching you, punching you. And then, you’re saying, “Oh, Pat, you’re doing something great to me. Thank you.” And then I stop, and because I stopped punching you, you feel better. That’s the thought that goes through my head every time someone says, ‘It feels so good but it hurts. I do it all the time but it hurts.” It’s like, all right, yeah, it hurts because you’re doing something wrong and the body’s telling you stop. So when you do stop doing something that hurt you, of course it’s going to feel better, of course it’s going to change.
But do you wonder why your body keeps on getting tighter and tighter in that area? Because it’s building more and more protection against you. That’s what it’s doing. So the reason why your foam rolling never progresses is because you keep on doing it in a manner that’s forcing your body to design itself to protect harder. So you have to come up with more and more cunning ways to foam roll to get your [?] system to work better. Instead of doing it in a way where your body says, ‘You know what? This isn’t the right place to work efficiently. Let’s back off, let’s lengthen.’ And then your body is going to start saying, ‘Oh, wait. Look, this is working, this is right, let’s work more.’
But there is a downside to the “let’s work more.” Is, it is going to start [?] binding up a little bit better but it’s going to be a different type of a [?] binding, guaranteed. It’s going to be something that’s not so stubborn to get rid of. As soon as you start working with your body, it’s going to go. It’s just going to give, it’s going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember that, let’s go up. Let’s move, let’s move, let’s move. Let’s get it to lengthen, let’s get it to move, let’s get it to become more pliable.’
So if you find yourself doing that face and you’re doing, ‘Oh, my God. It hurts. Oh, my God. It hurts.’ Stop what you’re doing, stop. Because if you’re doing this… Oh, my gosh, you’re doing a horrible service to yourself and I see it all the time. The whole pain and no gain scenario is overrated. It’s done. You need to stop doing this to yourself because you’re only hurting yourself for the long term.
Yes, your body will change, it’s an adaptive device. It will change no matter what, but it’s not going to change always for the good for the long term. So it’s very, very key to stop doing this whole foam rolling because it hurts, I have to do it. You have to do it in the right way. So I’m going to give you three tips how to do this.
Number one, foam rolling is all about slow pace. It needs to be slow.
Number two, it’s all about angle and weight load. You have to understand that your body is– it needs to be able to move. So you need to now have your weight load someplace else, so you can actually get near the proper weight load for that area. If you’re on your quad, the opposite leg needs to be holding that weight load.
Number three, you need to find out what your body is saying, how it’s saying it, what areas it needs to do and focus on what muscle you’re doing. It’s not just about just run and going, and then rolling all over the place, because that’s when your body is going to protect. You need to find out, “My body says, ‘Oh, this is comfortable. This is where I need to go.” So the optimum word is you want to live in a world of discomfort, not pain, discomfort. And then work your way from there. Never going to this pain zone. So find out where your body is saying, “Go,” and only go to that place of discomfort.
Once you past that discomfort world, if anyone goes to hit you, you’re going to protect yourself. Think about that. Don’t you think your body is going to do the same thing against you? Anything external coming in, it’s guaranteed to protect a little bit. But now, you throw in pain, 100% protection. Let’s stop doing that. That’s my plea to the world. Stop foam rolling to pain. Follow those three steps and follow all the videos that I have for foaming rolling that’s not painful. You know, follow it. And I hopefully see you soon. Bye.
